


Renown

by ReceiverofWisdom



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, I cut this off because I felt like I was dragging it out, but I could continue it, so here it is, someone dreamed that korra time traveled and met azula, this is a prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 09:51:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3406238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReceiverofWisdom/pseuds/ReceiverofWisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She is in a dreamed state of bliss. She is weightless and without oppressive responsibility. The land reforms beneath her apparent will. Mountains shrivel and rise, oceans part and mend, volcanoes swell and die. The air currents that flow in her breath are both smoldered and freeing from one corner of the nations to the next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Renown

It frightens her; the rate at which she sweeps through time. 

Memories and eons of collaborative experiences bubble through her mind’s eye in a cacophony so brilliant, she cannot defer her own recollections from the impressions of strangers and familiars alike.

She is in a dreamed state of bliss. She is weightless and without oppressive responsibility. The land reforms beneath her apparent will. Mountains shrivel and rise, oceans part and mend, volcanoes swell and die. The air currents that flow in her breath are both smoldered and freeing from one corner of the nations to the next.

She has lived amongst the various stages and terraforms of their Earth, seamlessly splicing through one stage of life into the next.

When she wakes she is on the edge of a bated exhale. Her eyes are wild, and she scrambles to gain purchase of the array of sights, smells, and sounds that overwhelmed her moments beforehand.

Connected, bridged, vast and purposeful, as The Avatar was intended to be.

She feels horribly deprived, each past sensation ebbing away until they are a blur of uncredited suspicions, the remnants of reverie and dreaming that disappear into broken parts as one rolls out of bed, places their feet upon the floor, and moves about their day in greater focus.

But she has no bed beneath her, and the realization is greatly puzzling. 

Her last physical memory stemmed from the comfort of a soft bed and pleasantly-scented sheets, not the strong smell of earth, and a rock digging persistently into a part of her back.

Korra wiggles a bit to try and rid it from that particular spot, and finds that she is sore everywhere.

Not the long day of training kind of sore, but the recently beaten and bruised kind of sore.

She grunts as she slowly heaves herself forward, terse and strained. She is adorned in nothing more than loose pants and a tanktop; the clothes she had been sleeping in prior to her evident journey beyond her bedroom. For all the times she had gone to sleep and woke in a relatively similar location, this stark difference caused her heart to dip into a furious rhythm as she turned her upper half about, gathering her surroundings and twisting out each satisfying pop of her protesting back.

Her long hair is a tangled mess that she tries to sort with the threading of her fingers through the wild strands.

Smoke bellows up from the tops of the trees. Black, she notes, meaning that it is still continually fed and catered to. The sun is in the midst of rising or setting, something Korra cannot defer considering her unfamiliar location. For the miles of stretched forest beyond Republic City, the Avatar recognizes none of it.

The landscape is greener, thicker, more promising to harvest season than she remembered it to be. No spirits pervade the clear air, and the walks of life that do linger at the edges of her vision are clearly wary of human presence to a degree in which they chatter nervously, conspiring her downfall, or their retreat.

She gets up on shaky legs and grapples for the nearest trunk of a tree to steady herself on. A short breath of fire warms her prickled skin. Even as one so thoroughly comfortable in chilled temperatures, the uneasiness that prods upon her skin causes her to shiver and desire some mode of comfort. The fire breath, in its raw elemental form, provides such assurance.

She staggers for several yards to catch her bearings, and ends up on the ground again.

Hunger plagues her rationale, and after a bitter quick decisiveness, she begins an expedition towards the small line of smoke that billows over the broad, green trees.

It is late, she concludes, as the sky grows dimmer, not burning with the brilliance of a new day.

They are warm colours, as opposed to the often far-off appeal of the polar sun. Korra tries to base this observation to gain a better idea of her location.

She weaves herself through the thick trees and undergrowth with the grace of a drunk lion-moose. Surely anything within half a mile was warned long before her arrival, and yet beings of various sizes trailed at the corners of her vision, observing the sight of perpetual hilarity at each misplaced step or soft curse.

Where are the cobblestone paths? The buildings? The reckoning murmur of vehicles and street traffic? Where were the streets themselves?

A bellowing roar shreds through the thick brush, and Korra stops in her tracks with the crushing familiarity of its tone

She is soon running, stumbling no less, but making frighteningly urgent progress before crashing through into an open space.

Soldiers in stark vermilion crowd around the massive white puffed form of her polarbear-dog companion. Their nearly skeletal face masks and rough tones have Naga shuddering into a clear panic, and with each bout of flames spewed into her direction from the oppressive fists of the soldiers, she clears them several feet back with a fitful spur of choppy barks and long roars.

Her hackles are raised, and Korra cannot recall the last time she had seen her friend so panicked. 

In spite of her exhaustion, she pulls herself away from the line of foliage into the clearing, matching the heat of the harassing benders’ with a wall of crackling flames that put a defined barrier between the large canine and the Fire Nation soldiers.

Naga backs up, bewildered, towards the trees, swiping a massive paw at the couple of stragglers who had been on the other side of the flame wall, too taken by the sudden interference to sport adequate defense against the power of the captive soon turned upon them.

The soldiers look upon the bluish colour of her pajamas, the very peasantry-aesthetic of it, and give moment to silently reflect amongst one another. The blue does not match the lively red that bends to the stranger’s will. They do not attack when Korra diminishes the wall, and turns upon them with slurred ferocity; judging, trying her might to identify the uniforms of a nation she was comfortable with. 

They have an older style of fighting, she notes, with particular fondness to information conjured from snippets of Tenzin’s teachings.

They remain poised and coiled, ready to lash, but waiting for her advancement, curious and confident to allow the opponent the first move.

Korra does not grasp at this. Instead, she begins inching herself back towards her companion, who familiarizes herself with the same sentiment until the Avatar has wound a fist into her fur – she is missing the harness – and with a discreet pump of air beneath the bender, Korra mounts.

The two tear their way right through the bound thicket on the other side of the clearing.

Behind her, Korra can make out the sound of the soldiers scuffling, making way for their ostrich-horses to give a very likely pursuit.

She spurs her reunited friend onwards. In approximately ten minutes, they are wading their way upstream, powered by strong paws and the push of waterbending. 

\---

Several hours later, they lay exhausted on a bank. The sand that grates against her skin is a dim annoyance compared to the various mosquito-bees that pervade her line of sight. She often does not bother to wave them away.

Naga accommodates herself by hiding her face beneath her large paws, in between shoving her muzzle into a much calmer part of the river, attempting to snag a skunk-fish into her mouth.

Korra long since ceased advising her otherwise.

Skunk-fish had become an incredibly rare species, since fishing lines along the coasts of the Fire Nation lands decimated their population a few years after the end of the war to accommodate the losses of the Earth Kingdom. More pointedly, along Ember Island and the newer Republic city.

Still, Korra lets her do her thing without too much further pestering. The population of skunk-fish, at least in that particular river, was absolutely bountiful. Surely a bit of harassing was not going to re-consider the bountifulness of that particular region. Perhaps their species was making a gradual comeback in the remote parts of – wherever she was.

The lack of knowledge in that aspect is increasingly distressing.

Her bountiful distress is interrupted when something sopping wet and heavy drops onto her stomach, seeping through the only clothes she has in her possession. 

Naga looms over her, evidently prideful of her capture of the skunk-fish, and clearly wanting to share.

On a relatively full stomach, and her furry companion content to peel remains from a pile of bones, Korra meditates on the strangeness of her irregular, forsaken position in the world.

She needed a map. To get a map, she needed to find a village or town. To find a village or town, she would need a map.

Or, she could follow the river upstream for some odd amount of miles.

Beyond the expanse of the wilderness, they are tracked. She can tell because Naga gets antsy whenever they stay in a location for too long, foraging for supplies and food or whatever could come of use to them.

She follows the river as intended, and further into the night, her pursuers seem to have lost her. By the break of dawn, the sun peers sleepily over the tops of the shroud of mountains beyond the trees that so well conceal the Avatar, curious to the happenings that carry on past its slumber.

Korra recalls a brevity of a tale her mother once told her in her earliest days. How the sun only rises to their horizon because of an endless thirsting knowledge for the occurrences of time, and how the moon never meets the sun to share what it has missed. Ever chasing the night to bring upon it its own light of revelation. Korra finds the absence of recollection in time sobering. She relates it to the expendable, foreign years that passed before her eyes, and how she had missed so much of it. How, much like the sun, she was chasing away the night, silently interrogating the moon from a distance, as if it would dare gossip to her about the happenings that slipped between her fingers.

Naga gives a soft “boof” and stops where she is.

Squinting into what long shadows remain, Korra can make out a dirt path. Listening closely to what is around her, beyond the worrisome and thick tone of her companion, Korra can make out an odd gait and the rolling of wooden wheels. 

She dismounts and leads the polarbear-dog to the edge of where forest entwines with something vastly traveled upon, peering down the leaf-skittered path.

An ostrich-horse lumbers itself towards their direction, putting a cart and a head-nodding driver who barely seems to be giving his attention to the road.

The ostrich-horse notices her long before the driver does, and it is only deterred from its path when Naga manages to snuffle her nose out from behind her master and greet the bi-pedal beast. It shrieks at the foreign sight of a canine-oriented creature that certainly does not commonly inhabit a forested region, and the driver awakes with a start, just in time to keep the ostrich-horse from careening right into the nearest trunk of a tree with a snap of the reigns.

The bi-pedal prances nervously in place as the driver leans over to coax it into ease. Korra recognizes his robes as, too, identified with the Earth Kingdom. She meanders her way over, keeping a hand out to convey to Naga that she should stay back.

“Hey, ah, excuse me? Could you tell me the name of this road? Or even, really, just a generality of where I am?”

The driver regards her with eased suspicion, far more concerned about the enormous looming polarbear-dog than the state and colour of her attire.

Conscious of this, Korra tugs at a strap on her tanktop.

“Green Bay road. Head further north-west, and there’s the Green Bay settlement.”

That does not sound familiar at all. The driver seems to realize this, and tries to specify. 

“You’re not too far from the Mo Ce Sea.”

That, Korra can identify. It connects to West Lake to enter Ba Sing Se, and Yue Bay, to sliver into Republic City. She remembered attempting to cross it once. It is, evidently, not a fond memory.

She tries to map it out through a thought process and comprehensive recollection of the landscape. It is likely horribly inaccurate.

“Okay, so if the Mo Ce Sea is to the west – where’s Republic City from here?”

She has not received that odd of a look in a long time. The driver seems entirely puzzled, which is unreasonable. Republic City is highly renown.

“Never heard of it.” He finally says, dismissively, and urges the ostrich-horse forth. “Someone else might know. Keep following the path and, like I mentioned, there’s a little settlement up there. Maybe get yourself a bath.”

The Avatar inspects herself. She probably smells like wet dog, and fish guts. She cannot imagine how she must look to anyone else, crawling bleary-eyed from beyond the forest, soaked, and looking mangier than her companion. Foaming at the mouth would not even deter from her appearance, if not suit it.

She reaches the settlement by the end of the day. Most of her journey is taken in meandering stroll beside her companion. The wilderness is thick and vast, and the air that fills Korra’s lungs brings about a profound inner peace, apart from the enduring worry of her universal misplacement. She tries not to dwell.

The settlement is dingy and small. No amount of any technology has seemed to appeal to it at any point in time. 

When Korra passes whatever could be relative to a gate, she gains immediate holding attention from anyone who happens to peer into her direction. No because of her appearance, she quite suits many of the worn-down gatherers, but because of the white beast beside her who stands out like a broken leg. Her fur is brilliant against the dim mossy green of the forest, as dirtied as it is in some spots from the extraneous trek throughout the night and the day afterwards.

The long shadows are back, and they stretch the other direction. Naga flops down beside her any time she stops, and her own feet feel like they might fall off. Her eyes roam for an inn, and nothing more. Unable to identify too many houses from one another, she ends up asking around. The first person she contacts points her to a dainty shack a few houses down. The only thing that gives it a very grand definition from the rest of the area is the fact it has a sign hanging loose above the doorway. It is apparently a self-made business.

When she enters and requests a room, the inn keeper spots Naga from beyond the window, and states that the polarbear-dog is welcomed inside as long as she can mind herself.

Korra is numb with shock as she is informed of this, and the fact that there is no bath – people wash by the river, and that she has forgotten about her lack of money, and that the inn keeper will make an exception as long as she makes up for her night with early morning labour.

All of that, as surprising as it is, suits her fine.

The inn keeper, as he informs her of the location of her room, remarks about how rare it is to see water tribe so far south. 

Korra tries to inform him that she is from the southern tribe.

The inn keeper laughs, and tells her he has never really heard of any tribe members remaining in the south.

This confuses Korra greatly, and she does not remark upon it as she coaxes Naga into squeezing through the doorway. Before she can succeed, the inn keeper informs her that he will not have his bedding smelling like dog and fish, so Korra heads out towards the river.

In the morning, she is woken early by the distinguished smell of smoke. Naga has a grip on the bottom of her green borrowed pants, and is trying to pull her out of bed by shaking the captured appendage around.

She practically flies out of bed, shoving herself against the window on the other side of the cramped room. She has to smooth away uncared for grime and squint, but beyond the window, several rows of houses are on fire.

Korra stumbles her way downstairs, nearly being knocked over by her excited associate in the process.

Mongoose-lizards are terrifying a group of people who are desperately trying to escape the other direction, as well as avoid the spreading flames. Others less perturbed by the lizards are trying, with earthbending, to put an end to the spread of the ravenous flames. 

When Korra bends a large rocky mound between the lizards and the people, one of the creatures wiggles itself right over the wall of earth. The other two regard her with attentive eyes before they begin moving towards her. 

Naga is having none of that. When the two cross some invisible boundary established by the dog, she bolts after them before Korra can ward them away with more than a few rocky chunks picked up from in front of the inn.

“Where is the Avatar?”

Korra’s heart leaps into her throat at the sheer severity of the tone.

“We followed the trail of his bison right to here. Don’t you dare claim ignorance.”

The accusation is followed by a spout of blue fire. As it collects upon the wooden and earth structures, it melds into a bright orange that fights with the horizon for brilliance.

Seeing how Naga fairs well against the mongoose-lizards, Korra flees from the scene to investigate the source of the village’s turmoil, and to put an end to it.

No one competes against the one responsible for the disaster.

She stands alone in furious calculation, setting fire to another separate part of a house each time she catches eyes with someone who does not satisfy her with an answer.

A smaller female in pink dances her way to the tyrant’s side, unaffected by the rage that other inflicts upon the living and their houses.

“Mai and I can’t find anymore clumps of hair.” She holds up a short piece of snowy fur, making a face. “It kind of stopped at the entrance on the other side. I don’t think they could hide a big bison anywhere –.”

“Hey!” Korra cups her hands around her mouth, beckoning for attention as she observes the woman in sharp red armour taking another harmful stance, aiming towards the houses beside the inn that graciously held her residence.

The two snap their heads instantaneously into her direction, in union, and it makes Korra scrunch her face slightly before she braves a continuation. 

“I don’t have a bison. That’s Naga’s hair.” How the firebenders she previously ran into lost her trail, she would not know. If Naga was losing enough fur along the way to be tracked through the bramble –.

“We’re looking for the Avatar, not an earth peasant with a dog.”

“I don’t know what you were expecting, but I am the Avatar. That’s kind of a worldly recognized thing since I opened the second portal. You don’t need to terrorize a village to find me.”

Both females give her a long hard look. The less predatory one presses a finger to her chin in mockery of thought, as if what she debated truly had no weight at all. Her thought process was catering, in some form, to the one beside her, whose full attention reigned down upon Korra.

“Isn’t the Avatar the bald kid with the arrow?”

“You two have lived under a rock for how long?” The disbelief in Korra’s tone is refined, past the crackles of destruction, beyond the chaos of reptile and canine in the clearing not too far beyond. She went to accent the insult, and was almost met with a face full of blue flame that caused a sheen on her skin from its intensity, had she not bent herself backwards to avoid it.

The one so well guarded within her pink attire begins to cartwheel towards her, and for a moment, Korra is thrown into a momentum of panic over the sudden close quarters.

She begins backing herself up, and before she can even react when the acrobatic threat rights herself and ducks forward to land a blow, something heavy thrashes into her side and sends her sailing to the sidelines.

Naga had backed towards her at some point in her own strife against two antagonistic reptiles who did not have the sense to give up so long as both were active, and accidentally whipped her tail into the not-as-sturdy body of the Avatar.

Ty Lee seems just as surprised as Korra, who lands several feet away. The Acrobat is forced to reroute herself with a pleased “thank you” thrown towards the polarbear-dog, while Azula steps in from the sidelines to deal her own credited damage against the acclaimed Avatar.

She, evidently, has little intent of wasting any more time on false assertions. Ty Lee can spot the blue licks of heat from her comrade’s palms even from her spinning world as she advances on the indicated target.

The target that, recovering from the assault of her friend’s tail, proceeds to shoo her into another direction with a rather volatile flame; another thing that surprises the Acrobat, who had accepted both the Earth-Kingdom orientation of the other’s clothing, and the general apparel of Water Tribe origin. 

She then proceeds to conjure up a wall of earth between herself and Azula. 

Azula stops dead in her tracks, and her jaw drops open.

The two aggressors exchange looks beyond flame and earth with wordlessly profound clearance.


End file.
